1. Field of the Invention
This present invention relates to an electrical connector for mounting a microphone, such as a microphone of the disc type, and more specifically to a microphone connector mountable onto a printed circuit board (PCB) and having a low profile over the PCB.
2. The Related Art
Conventionally, in order to mount a microphone for a portable telephone set or the like, various mounting methods such as a method wherein a microphone itself is soldered to a printed circuit board or another method wherein a microphone is secured to a case of a body for the portable telephone set or the like and leads from the microphone are soldered to a printed circuit board are used to electrically connect the microphone and the printed circuit board to each other. Typical mounting structures and connecting methods are described below.
Referring to FIG. 7, a traditional microphone connector 50 comprises a housing 5, a cave 51 defined by the housing 5, a plurality of connecting terminals 52 located in the housing 5, contacting portions 521 of the connecting terminals 52 projecting into the cave 51, and solder portions 522 of the connecting terminals 52 extending outside the housing 5. The microphone connector 50 is welded on a printed circuit board 6 by the solder portions 522 of the connecting terminals 52. The microphone connector 50 accepts a microphone in the cave 51.
In the conventional microphone unit mounting structures described above, the microphone connector 50 is held between the microphone and the printed circuit board 6 to establish electric connection between the microphone and the printed circuit board 6. The microphone connector 50 and the microphone are totally retained over the printed circuit board 6. However, reduction in height has proceeded with portable telephone sets or the like in recent years. Therefore, the height of the traditional microphone connector located on the printed circuit board needs to be decreased.
Accordingly, in order to reduce the thickness of the body of the portable telephone set, it is necessary to reduce the thickness of each of the parts such as the microphone connector. In other words, the conventional microphone unit mounting structures described above has a problem in that, from a restriction to the dimension of the sum of the thickness of the microphone and the thickness of the microphone connector and the printed circuit board, the thickness of the body cannot be reduced.